Author's Note: Two Updates today. - Once More should appear within a few hours. The other fic was supposed to get an update last week, however, on Sept 8th, I suffered a nasty dog bite to my face (Right cheek - oh the irony!) which resulted in losing a nice chunk of flesh which meant needing some reconstructive surgery and various other medically related things left me scatterbrained. I've had THIS chapter here, ready a few days before the incident.

No, I'm not kidding.

I may make a post over on Tumblr (Phantom-Sith) but I haven't decided if I want everyone to know what I look like or not. If you have questions, you are welcome to ask.

For right now, I'm trying to get Ghost Story back on a bi-weekly update again(If anyone apart from Marilyn still reading?) and keep Once More on its schedule, if time and headspace allows it.

MarilynKC: Charles is a lot like Erik in many things. With his innocence(or what remains of it) he can notice things a little clearer, and you are going to see that come to fruition in this chapter. Michael? He'll be alright just, very sore indeed! And I wish this had more of a readership too. It gets very disheartening to put love and energy into this and it only gets a few hits. Christine dies and people quit reading, and I go back to debating its fate. I knew it would never be popular, but I had hoped it would have a solid little following.

Epiphany

If anything of a more sinister nature occurred in Paris, it would happen in the Pigalle District. While rather unassuming and dull in daylight, it became vibrant at night with numerous cabarets, bars, and Maisen Closes – otherwise known as brothels. Some establishments even managed to offer all three, the most famous of them being Moulin Rouge, or rather, the Red Windmill.

Its trademark feature was just that, a large windmill painted red, sitting atop the roof of its walled entrance. With more businesses and neighborhoods gaining access to the growing number of electrical grids, the Moulin Rouge took full advantage of artificial lights. It glittered and flashed in all its glory, drawing droves of people to its open lot crammed between two buildings. Music resounded throughout the night amongst the gay chatter of the masses.

On the surrounding streets, men of diverse classes and social standings milled about. Most of them were inebriated out of their right minds and looking to spend the night in a woman's arms. In this neighborhood, they never had to wander far if they had enough money left in their pockets.

As the night was still in its youth, Robert Destler didn't have to be overly prudent. He had a good hour more before the cutthroats and thieves came out to take advantage of fools in a stupor.

Robert picked his way into the Moulin Rouge, where he followed a stream of men through the garish wall that led into the large expanse of an open patio, paved with stone. Wrought iron tables and chairs filled the space, while the strings of electric lights hung above them provided adequate luminance with spectacle.

Beyond the tables and those who occupied them sat the large stage, complete with wings and eaves so performers and stagehands alike could stay out of sight. While performances were primarily colorful introductions, it was but a taste of what was to come. Upon the conclusion of introductions, the stage opened to the crowd as the main entrance into a lavish dance hall trimmed in reds and golds. The floors were polished black with booths and balconies overlooking all that transpired there, with another stage at the end.

While they hosted cabarets several times a week where the dance hall was lined with chairs, other nights, it was nothing more than an exhibition of scandalous dancing between staff and visitors. Guests had no reservations about fawning over scantily clad girls in vibrant dresses prancing about in constant exuberance.

It was not unheard of to have many fellows lose their wits with a glass of Absinthe and a woman flaring her skirts in his face as the girls performed an over-the-top version of the Can-Can.

This night was such a night. Men and mistresses, dancers and courtesans, all intermingled in shameless reveling.

Perhaps on any other night, Robert might have joined them. However, he needed to abstain from Absinthe and the very tempting dances of a girl. A head fogged by spirits and lust would do him little good, not with work to be done.

Robert slid along the balcony, eager to gain a vantage point to further survey the room. He needed a very specific type of person, and spotting them was not a difficult matter. The brutes the Moulin Rouge employed were hard men to miss. Tall, well-muscled, and almost as provocatively dressed as the women. Many of them were dark-skinned in varying shades - Indians, Africans, Moroccans, Spanish – it seemed Oller and Zidler were as exotic in their male hires as they were with women.

After all, mistresses and perhaps the rare wife needed something savory to look upon as well.

As Robert turned a corner, a young woman in a gaudy dress of oranges and reds sprang out from behind a column. With a robust giggling purr, she accosted him with a flare of her skirts and a peak at her undergarments. Before she could drop them, he tugged her close to him and pressed her back against the column and rail.

When he pressed his lips into the nape of her neck for a taste of her smooth olive-colored skin, the girl hooked a leg on his hip, her arms winding around his neck as she swooned.

The kiss only lasted three seconds before he lifted his head to look at her. "Maybe next time, but right now, I would like to talk to your boss."

"Oh, well…Monsieur Zidler is busy," she answered airily.

"I'm a very patient man."

Her hands snaked along his shoulders and down his arms. "I'm sure you are…" she said with hunger slipping into her voice as she felt his muscle tone. "I can help make the time go by."

"That won't be necessary, but perhaps you can help me in other ways. What do you know of the de Chagnys?"

She shrugged a little. "Not much really, but I know his solicitor, I think. He's one of my clients."

"What's his name?"

"Monsieur Tomas."

"Merci, mon cherie," he kissed her hand this time. "Alas, it's still very important that I speak to Zidler."

She bit her lip, "At the end," she nodded to the end of the balcony behind him. "Jerome can take you to his office."

Robert dipped his hand into one of his pockets and drew out a franc note with a large sum before he tucked it between her bosoms. "This conversation stays between us."

She nodded, and he left her there without a glance back as he went deeper into the dance hall. At the end of the corridor, he came to a black man who was sharply dressed in the style of the Moulin Rouge, standing by the stairwell.

"Jerome?"

The man nodded.

"I must speak with Zidler."

A brief chat and a flash of his badge later, Robert joined Zidler in his office. The co-owner's workspace was as glitzy as the rest of his establishment. Red, again, was the prominent color scheme, accompanied by golden trimmings that reminded him of South Asia and France of the last century combined in a queer assortment of decorum.

Charles Zidler himself was a portly man with rosy cheeks and a nose that matched his curly orange-colored hair. Behind him stood a massive windowed wall that permitted a glance down at the dance hall below any time he wished.

Upon his entry, Zidler popped up from his chair with a smile spread wide across his face. "Ah! Another prospective investor I hope!"

Robert pondered his reply before opening his lapel in the most boring manner to reveal his badge again.

Zidler's cheer fell away as he plopped back into his chair. "Oh, one of you," he intoned in a rather pleasant tone, just not thrilled.

"I'm certain you knew it would only be a matter of time before one of us found our way here," Robert commented as he wandered about the office, admiring some of the exotic and rather erotic decorations. Many of the paintings that adorned every wall were rather interesting to his untrained eye. They captured the essence of movement and grandeur of cabaret.

"Unfortunately…"

"I am told you are quite the keeper of dirty laundry. With a place like this, I'm not surprised. Tongues tend to wrangle when liquored up and pleasured…"

"In a manner of speaking…"

"What do you know of the de Chagnys?"

Zidler raised a bushy brow at the name. "De Chagny? That's not a name I expected to hear," he paused a few moments, his eyes wandering upwards to the right for a moment in recollection. "The late Comte, Philippe de Chagny came here often enough. Spent quite a bit of money on my girls. Occasionally, he brought his younger brother Raoul along – he was a Vicomte at the time – but he never partook of anything. He seemed like he'd rather be anywhere else but here!" Zidler huffed at the notion. "Alas, that was months before the Comte drowned."

Robert drifted closer to him. "Do you know of any debts they may have owed?"

"Perhaps… They were never a family for owing, I hear."

"It is important that you tell me everything you know, facts, rumors, enemies, debts. I want names of any of their associates that you and your girls know of."

Zidler paled as the red washed away from his pudgy cheeks. "This is about the murders, isn't it?"

"Why else would I be here?"

Then Zidler talked. He kept talking until the hour was late, and there was nothing more to tell. Robert had a list of a dozen names he needed to look into. Someone would know something, and he would find it out sooner than later.

~x ~x ~X~ x~ x~

Morning came in the form of a shaft of light striking the polished brass of Nadir's mantel clock. Its bright reflection in his eyes roused Erik from his ephemeral slumber in a matter of seconds. Erik shifted to avoid the stream, blinking away the haze of sleep. Once he did, he carefully drew himself up from the sofa and Charles's attached form, then glided over to the front bay windows where he adjusted its curtains, closing the troublesome gap.

He turned back toward the boy, where Charles remained sound asleep, undisturbed by neither light nor activity. The residual warmth on Erik's side lightened his spirit for having his dearest child seek comfort in his company…

…something Erik never expected to experience.

Clenching his jaw, Erik stifled the worst of an oncoming yawn before wandering across the hall from the drawing room to the study and one of Nadir's overstocked bookcases for the bounty of tomes that might inspire some thought on the situation at hand.

Erik was a man of extraordinary recall of sight and sound. Yet in very few cases, if his mind deemed something trivial, he could remember it without essential context. No location or person sprang to forethought in this matter. All he had was a name to focus on, and that brought him little other than the knowledge that this Taveres was a fixer.

"His father owed a terrible debt…" Christine said so clearly in his mind.

Erik paused, mulling over the repeated phrase.

His father owed a terrible debt… he turned to the room, mind working. Raoul's father was the family Comte, succeeded by Philippe de Chagny, the eldest of two sons. The old Comte died of natural causes – Raoul had once told Christine. Old Philibert de Chagny had time to pass on family matters to his heir. Nevertheless, with Philippe de Chagny's untimely death beneath the Opera…such matters died with him.

~X~

It was the lull between, where Nadir and the Girys vanished, granting him leave to bar them from his home permanently. They had all but given up their endeavors with him, when the fetid stench of bodily rot and decay drew him out from his hole in the ground. He would have contented himself to die alone in Christine's leaving. However, doing so in peace without pungent odors assaulting his olfactory senses in conscious moments became little more than fantasy. It crept into his house, overpowering his array of aromatic spices from the Orient.

With feline dexterity, Erik floated across the narrow outcropping along the water's edge, eyes sweeping across the tranquil surface. Inspecting his lake was not the simplest of feats. No, even those who dwelled within the Opera and glimpsed the lake with their own eyes often described it wrong.

It was not as vast and sweeping as many would say or believe. While the expanse was immense with countless walls that doubled as support columns with arched openings, it became impossible to take in the lake with single a glance. He had to move through the vaulted chambers of the glorified water tank to find disturbances. It was to his design that there were only a select few areas frequented by Opera staff and other trespassers; far from his home. Erik had ways of tracking down strays with ease.

After several minutes of venturing between chambers and following the putrid scent, Erik spied upon a group of ripples out of place. He followed the undulations to the main chamber which was the most spacious expanse. There he saw a bloated body floating in the center.

Ah, the Siren claimed another victim. When did that happen? There have been no trespassers since that night… oh…

Sparing no further thought, Erik maneuvered as close as possible without going for a swim himself, and drew out his lasso. In a flick of his wrist, Erik ensnared the corpse with the thin line of catgut. He turned towards the shore at the Communard Road and towed the body along towards it.

He soon loosed his Punjab Lasso with another flick and tugged the body ashore.

In that instant, he noted that this was not the work of the Siren. The gash in the side of the man's discolored and swollen skull was a testament to that. A Siren lured her victim to their watery grave by hypnotizing song, not bashing them over the head. Far too messy.

This was not his work – the Siren's work – but whose was it?

Erik pressed a handkerchief over his pitiful nose and mouth to muffle some of the odor as he tilted the man's head to the side to get a better look at him. Short hair, goatee…fashionable features for a man of nobility. He flipped a part of the man's jacket open and drew out a handkerchief from the inner pocket. It took only a brief examination of the embroidered initials over the de Chagny family crest to identify this man as Philippe de Chagny, the Vicomte's older brother.

Erik turned the Comte's head back to the other side to study the gash there once more. He committed its shape to memory as fragmented voices trickled to his ears from above. A glance revealed growing luminance from the passage leading back up to the opera. Undoubtedly drawn to the odor, as he had been, the opera staff was coming to find its source.

Weighing his options and suppressing the need to investigate the curious death himself, Erik returned the silk handkerchief back to Philippe de Chagny's pocket, and pushed him off the shore enough to make it appear that he just washed up. Satisfied, Erik retreated to his shadows just as the first man rounded the corner.

~X~

"You know, old friend, I'd rather not see that look in your eyes."

Erik blinked out of his reverie to find Nadir leaning back against his desk with his arms crossed. "What, precisely, is that look, Daroga?"

"That look you get when your devious mind is at work."

Erik snapped his fingers. "Ah yes! Even when such thought processes bring forth an epiphany, you sit there fraught with nerves."

Nadir issued a heavy sigh, "Be out with it, Erik."

"I have been looking at this the wrong way. Old Comte Philibert owed a debt. He passed this on to his eldest before he died. Yet, Philippe de Chagny never saw his death coming, thus could not tell his brother of it."

"Yes, that is why Raoul and Christine are dead."

"No."

"No? Erik, you're not—"

Erik waved Nadir into silence. "Philippe was murdered, aht!" he cut Nadir off before the Persian spoke out of turn. "But not by me, Nadir. Really, you know of my ways and that of the Siren — his death was simply too messy. It lacked…art. No. Philippe was killed because he was no longer obliging this debt. Why kill the only other person capable of paying it —after killing the predecessor who never had a chance to pass it on? If Philippe would have even passed it on in the first place," Erik stated while he paced the room.

"If it was in the form of money, Raoul de Chagny perhaps began paying it as an expense. If it were something else, it would be easy enough to con him for a little while. But eventually, de Chagny would have looked into it. As loathe as I am to admit it, that boy was bright enough to question such things, reinvest interests and so forth. What if he discovered something sinister, and, like his brother before him, refused to pay?"

"Erik…these things are nothing more than conspiracy. You've nothing to substantiate these…theories."

"Life is but a conspiracy, Nadir! You know this better than most, or have you forgotten those rosy hours of Mazandaran?"

"We are no longer in Persia, Erik," sighed Nadir. His hand fell over his face and pinched the bridge of his nose to ward against an oncoming headache. How very old of him. Then again, he was in fact, old; several years his senior to be precise.

"And Europeans, Asians, and Russians—are no less deceitful or cunning, Nadir," Erik chided. "I do believe you ought to make an appointment with your physician and get your head checked. Your capacity for recall has diminished drastically."

Nadir dropped his hand from his face. "Says the certifiable one."

Erik ignored him, but before he could utter another word a small commotion in the next room drew his attention, preceding the near-panicked call of, "Erik!"

Conversation forgotten by the sound of his progeny's voice, he strode toward the next room to be assailed by the child who bolted to him with arms wide open until they wrapped around Erik's midriff. Wincing at the abrupt embrace, he slipped uncertain arms around Charles's shoulders, not daring to pull him in tight as he cherished the moment. "Did you think that I had left you?"

"I…" Charles heaved a long, shuddering breath. "I — Can we just go? Please?"

Erik grasped his son's shoulders and pulled him back to gaze at his pale face. More dark circles formed around his eyes and tears streaked down his clammy, hollow cheeks.

Oh… Charles, Erik thought with every millimeter of his being aching for his tormented child.

"I assure you, you are quite safe here, dear boy," Nadir chimed from behind, unaware of the boy's state since Erik made himself a protective barrier between them.

"No," Erik said, looking into his son's glassy eyes and giving his shoulders a small squeeze. "Your hospitality has been most generous, Nadir, however, it would be best for us to be on our way now."

"Nonsense —" Nadir huffed.

"Get ready, with your scarf," Erik let his voice whisper in Charles's ear. Relief fell across the boy's face as he nodded and turned back to the drawing room. As he turned back to Nadir, he said, "It is likely the Judiciaire will come to your door again sooner than later. It would be best if the boy were not here."

"You've already been in contact with one," Nadir protested.

Erik tilted his head and took a silent step towards him in a long glide, "I have no desire to deal with any other than the one. At this juncture, I find him more trustworthy than you."

"Is that so?"

"He is not the one who claims a kinship and then denied me seven years of knowing my child," Erik bit with low, cold venom in his every word. "If you had not denied me that one human right, then Christine could very well still be alive."

"You don't know that," Nadir riposted.

"Oh, but I do Nadir, because had I known about my son, I would have resided closer to them — at the very least, and Christine would have known where to find me."

"You're assuming too much, Erik."

"No," Erik rasped. "Regardless of what transpired between her and I — or the life she had with de Chagny — she still named our son Charles. A name I had selected."

Nadir's jaw clenched shut.

Sensing Charles behind him again, Erik turned and stepped over to their things in the drawing room, where he delved into a bag and drew out a leather mask that matched his skin tone. With his head in the corner and back to everyone, he switched the masks over his face in a blur before gathering everything up.

When he returned to Charles's side, catching his hand with a scant handful of seconds lapsing since his prior statement, Erik further snapped in his darkening ire, "You had no right to meddle in this matter, and you damn well know it."

"I did what I thought was best," Nadir growled.

"For whom?"

"The boy."

"Yes…A lot of good that did him," Erik bit back, giving Charles's hand a little squeeze.

"Ah yes, with a man barely fit to rear him."

"I may be worthless as a father, but by God, he will see adulthood and be capable of caring for himself if that is the last thing I do on this earth."

As father and son turned to leave, Charles paused and turned back to Persian, his face shrouded in a scarf as Erik had instructed. "He isn't worthless."

"You hardly know him, little de Chagny."

"I know enough. Maman promised that I would be safe with Erik, and that there was no one she trusted more to care for me. She's never lied."

"I'm sure," the Persian responded with a softened tone and an insincere smile.

Erik's hand tightened around his, and Charles was all too happy to leave the little townhouse.